Hey everyone, welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory.
Today, we’ll be discussing why Lord Voldemort didn’t attack the Longbottom family after the prophecy, which inevitably upended the life of Harry Potter.
The Prophecy
As many of you will know, the trajectory of Harry’s life was determined before he was even born. Just weeks before his birth on July 31st, 1980, a somewhat inadequate soothsayer named Sybil Patricia Trelawney provided the wizarding world with a prediction that would forever change the course of history.
She gave an authentic prophecy that would one day go on to become infamous while meeting with Professor Albus Dumbledore at the Hogshead Inn. After going into a trance-like state during the meeting, which was actually an informal interview for the Hogwarts divination teaching position, Trelawney expelled the following:
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice to fight him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not, and either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives.”
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies. Based on Trelawney’s appointment of the divination professor soon after, it’s believed that she made this prophecy in June 1980, mere weeks before the birth of Harry Potter.
Reasons for Targeting the Potters
After Harry’s birth, the reasons for Voldemort targeting the Potter family are rather easy to explain:
- Harry was born on July 31st, the end of the seventh month.
- Lily and James Potter, Harry’s parents, were both asked to join the Death Eaters while at Hogwarts and turned down the invitations.
- They were also part of the original Order of the Phoenix, which means they would have been part of missions to fight against Voldemort and his followers.
As the war against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters was ongoing, they certainly had many opportunities to defy Voldemort repeatedly. All of this adds up as to why Voldemort targeted the Potter family and believed Harry to be the wizard described in Trelawney’s prophecy.
The Longbottoms
But the real question is, why didn’t he also go after the Longbottoms? For Alice and Frank Longbottom would have likely also been invited as teens to become Death Eaters by the Dark Lord, only to reject his recruitment efforts.
Similar to Lily and James Potter, Alice and Frank were also members of the original Order of the Phoenix. Most notably, the Longbottoms gave birth to their son Neville on July 30th, 1980, just one day before Harry Potter.
What this means is that Professor Trelawney’s prophecy very well could have been about Neville Longbottom. After all, Neville’s childhood wasn’t much better than Harry’s. Neville’s childhood had been blighted by Voldemort just as much as Harry’s had, but Neville had no idea how close he’d come to having Harry’s destiny.
The prophecy could have referred to either of them. Yet, for his own inscrutable reasons, Voldemort had chosen to believe that Harry was the one meant. Had Voldemort chosen Neville, it would be Neville sitting opposite Harry bearing the lightning-shaped scar and the weight of the prophecy.
Possible Explanations
So, why didn’t Voldemort go after the Longbottoms? Here are a few possible explanations:
Voldemort’s Plan
There’s always the possibility that Voldemort was planning to murder Neville as well as Harry but just happened to go after the Potter family first.
We never hear anything from Severus about the Dark Lord targeting the Longbottoms as well as the Potters, but as he was so wrapped up in his love for Lily, perhaps he was only willing to betray Voldemort to save her and no one else.
Voldemort’s Perception
Voldemort saw something of himself in Harry and therefore inadvertently marked him as his equal. Both wizards are half-bloods, whereas Neville is a pure-blood wizard. For whatever reason, perhaps the Dark Lord thought that a boy who may grow up to be a wizard just like him was more dangerous and threatening than Harry, a boy from a pure-blooded lineage.
This is touched upon by Dumbledore in Order of the Phoenix. He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him, said Dumbledore, and noticed this Harry, he chose, not the pure-blood, which according to his creed is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing, but the half-blood like himself.
He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you as he intended, but gave you powers and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far—something that neither of your parents nor Neville’s parents ever achieved.
Dumbledore’s Influence
There’s also the chance that Voldemort isn’t the one who chose to go after Harry or Neville in the first place. Perhaps the wizard who actually made this choice was none other than Professor Albus Dumbledore.
While it’s true that Dumbledore helped the Potter family go into hiding after learning that Voldemort was planning to target them, wouldn’t he have also thought to help protect the Longbottoms as well?
Even though Snape only named Lily and her family as Voldemort’s targets, Dumbledore knew the prophecy. Being the brilliant wizard that he was, he no doubt would have been able to deduce that Neville Longbottom also fit the description of the child that would take down Voldemort.
But we know that he didn’t help the Longbottoms go into hiding, for they were at their home after the fall of Voldemort, which is where the Death Eaters tortured Frank and Alice to insanity. The question that remains here then is WHY?
The likely answer is that Neville came from a long line of witches and wizards, whereas Harry, without his parents, had no living magical relatives. Without any other form of support in the wizarding world, an orphaned Harry likely made a much easier boy to mentor and shape into the wizard Dumbledore needed him to become in order to sacrifice himself to defeat Voldemort.
In the case of Neville, it’s hard to imagine his gran being all too comfortable with the insanely dangerous excursions that Dumbledore led Harry on. The Dursleys, on the other hand, really didn’t seem to notice.
Conclusion
So, while I think the most likely explanation for why Voldemort didn’t go after the Longbottoms is that he simply never had the chance to, now you have a couple of other theories for your consideration as well.
And with that, we’ve come to the end of this article. What did you think? Do you agree that the Dark Lord would have tried to kill Neville if he hadn’t been defeated by his own killing curse? Or do you have a completely different theory?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
